Ora sono ubriaco d'universo. (Ungaretti)

That loud crap blares
from speakers large and small.
Can’t understand the words –
just dull thuds, synthetic sounds,
style of dress I’d almost laugh at.

Almost. “Deviant,” then in my mind, “thugs;”
no fun being scared of everyone younger.
I remember how my wife’s family
talked about me before she was my wife.
Nat King Cole and Sinatra played all too clear.
Too much vinegar on the salad.

One dinner I stared at a candle
flickering on the table.
The room had more than enough light.
In discrete moments the flame struggled.
My wife remembers the slight smirk I wore,
bright in its own way.

2 Comments

Who’s nat king cole or sinatra? are they students of the greatest musician-Kid rock? were they inspired by his song “cocky”?

The spanish economies new growth industry:

“She had expected a job in a hotel. But when Valentina arrived here two months ago from Romania, the man who helped her get here — a man she had considered her boyfriend — made it clear that the job was on the side of the road. He threatened to beat her and to kill her children if she did not comply. And so she stood near a roundabout recently, her hair in a greasy ponytail, charging $40 for intercourse, $27 for oral sex… In the past, most customers were middle-aged men. But the boom here, experts say, is powered in large part by the desires of young men — many of them traveling in packs for the weekend — taking advantage of Europe’s cheap and nearly seamless travel.”

“Dixon (the protagonist, not the Hardy Boys collective) has already published two novels. The first, a dark and, “according to the U.K.’s Observer, . . . ‘masterfully ugly and unsettling’ ” Patient Zero story called “Plague Boy,” earned favorable reviews in most places, “with the exception of The New York Times and Time and The Boston Globe.” … As the story opens, Dixon has completed a new novel called, appropriately enough, “Dead on Arrival,” which centers on a “suburban married man bored to numbness, into fantasy football.” One day his wife “purposely drives her car, with both kids in the back, off a cliff. Hilarity and high jinks ensue.” Dixon believes the book will resurrect his career. … “If I ever see Dan Brown on an airplane,” Dixon informs us, “I will follow him into the restroom and I’ll barge in on him just when he’s closing the door and yell, ‘Do you realize that you’re not any good and that you’re just lucky?’ I will stalk Mitch Albom and lunge at him and when I’ve got him down on the sidewalk I’ll say, ‘Hey, you know how you always write books about dying or dead people? Well, guess what? Your next book can be about yourself! ’Cause as of now you’re dead!’ ””

“On New Year’s Eve, Antonio Tamiozzo, 53, hanged himself in the warehouse of his construction business near Vicenza, after several debtors did not pay what they owed him. Three weeks earlier, Giovanni Schiavon, 59, a contractor, shot himself in the head at the headquarters of his debt-ridden construction company on the outskirts of Padua. As he faced the bleak prospect of ordering Christmas layoffs at his family firm of two generations, he wrote a last message: “Sorry, I cannot take it anymore. The economic downturn that has shaken Europe for the last three years has also swept away the foundations of once-sturdy lives, leading to an alarming spike in suicide rates. Especially in the most fragile nations like Greece, Ireland and Italy, small-business owners and entrepreneurs are increasingly taking their own lives in a phenomenon some European newspapers have started calling “suicide by economic crisis.””

“How exhilarating then to encounter “Suddenly, a Knock on the Door,” the new collection from Etgar Keret. An award-winning filmmaker, Keret is also one of Israel’s best-selling authors, a status he earned in a manner that would be downright heretical here: by writing extremely short, fantastical stories. Worse yet, they are frequently funny. Were he living in Brooklyn, Keret would have been hogtied by a pack of rabid agents and ordered to drop the shtick and write a novel already. Which is not to say that he has escaped the burdens of celebrity. Consider the ingenious title story, in which three armed men hold a writer named Keret hostage and demand he tell them a story. Keret (the character) offers up a nervous description of his plight. “That’s not a story,” one of his assailants protests. “That’s an eyewitness report. It’s exactly what’s happening here right now. Exactly what we’re trying to run away from. Don’t you go and dump reality on us like a garbage truck. Use your imagination, man, create, invent, take it all the way.””

Britain has a no “no-fault” divorce law, that means you have to have a reason. Here’s a sample:

“In her 30-odd years as a divorce lawyer, Vanessa Lloyd Platt has heard it all. The woman who sued for divorce because her husband insisted she dress in a Klingon costume and speak to him in Klingon. The man who declared that his wife had maliciously and repeatedly served him his least favorite dish, tuna casserole….In her 30-odd years as a divorce lawyer, Vanessa Lloyd Platt has heard it all. The woman who sued for divorce because her husband insisted she dress in a Klingon costume and speak to him in Klingon. The man who declared that his wife had maliciously and repeatedly served him his least favorite dish, tuna casserole. One petition read: “The respondent insisted that his pet tarantula, Timmy, slept in a glass case next to the matrimonial bed,” even though his wife requested “that Timmy sleep elsewhere.””

‘Newer social networks, like Path, FamilyLeaf and Pair, offer a range of constraints. A Path network, available only on smartphones, has a maximum of 150 friends. FamilyLeaf is restricted to family members. And Pair, which like Path is for smartphones only, is as small as a social network can be: just one other person. The average Facebook user in United States has 245 friends, according to a study published in February by the Internet and American Life Project of the Pew Research Center. That figure, however, well exceeds the “Dunbar number,” the 150 meaningful relationships that Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist, has suggested is the effective neurological limit the human brain can handle.”

Remember when Ari from “entourage” offered Vince the role of Jughead in the Archie movie? that was more fact than fiction:

“At this, the last of the privately run Mom-and-Pop comic book dynasties, Ms. Silberkleit, 59, the daughter-in-law of a company founder, Louis H. Silberkleit, is deadlocked in a court battle for control of the company with Jonathan Goldwater, 52, a son of another founder, John L. Goldwater. Like Betty and Veronica, the two are feuding over Archie’s future, but there is nothing comic — or friendly — about their rivalry. Each accuses the other of endangering the family legacy, Mr. Goldwater by wanting to expand Archie into a megabrand with help from outside investors and the Hollywood uber-agent Ari Emanuel, Ms. Silberkleit by vowing to keep the company’s traditions intact and preserve family ownership, ostensibly leading to stagnation.”

Corporations are pulling away from blogs in their attempts to brand market:

“A survey released earlier this year by the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth says the percentage of companies that maintain blogs fell to 37% in 2011 from 50% in 2010, based on its survey of 500 fast-growing companies listed by Inc. magazine. Only 23% of Fortune 500 companies maintained a blog in 2011, flat from a year ago after rising for several years. The trend in business is consistent with the broader loss of interest in blogging among all consumers. In late 2010, the Pew Research Center said blogging among adults ages 18 to 33 fell 2 percentage points in 2010 from 2008. “Blogging requires more investment. You need content regularly. And you need to think about the risk of blogging, accepting comments, liability issues, defamation,” says Nora Ganim Barnes, a professor at the university who wrote the report. One benefit of a blog: “It’s a tool and content you own.”